I got to use a friends a little during late ice last year, and it was pretty underwhelming. The cut was pretty aggressive, but it struggled to get through the foot or so of soft ice we had in March. You had to sort of lift the auger and feather it as you went through the last few inches or it would bind up. I also thought the hammer function was kinda hokey. It didn't seem to do anything besides make a bunch of noise. The blade protector was pretty useless as well. This was the 40 Volt model though, so it'll be interesting to see how the 120 Volt model works.